


A Ticket For a World Where We Belong

by Chash



Series: Holiday Fills 2018 [22]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodyswap, F/M, Grounder Bellamy Blake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-23 20:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17086970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Clarke Griffin wakes up in an unfamiliar body, in an unfamiliar house, onEarth.It's a lot to process.





	A Ticket For a World Where We Belong

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [ringmybellarke](http://ringmybellarke.tumblr.com/) and [la-la-lara](http://la-la-lara.tumblr.com/)! I'm calling this canon divergence with grounder Bellamy, but I didn't want to actually deal with grounders or much that happened in canon, so it's the basic premise but there's nothing wrong with the air in the Ark and Bellamy isn't part of any of the grounder groups we know.

Clarke wakes up with an erection, which is exactly as alarming as it sounds, but somehow becomes a secondary concern as everything else about her situation starts to register. Her bed is firmer than it's supposed to be, the air warmer. The sun feels brighter, and there are sounds of people close by, sounds of--something else, too. Sounds she's never heard before in real life, sounds she doesn't have words for.

She opens her eyes to see an expanse of unidentified ground in front of her, much closer than the floor of her bedroom should be. When she pushes herself up, her arm is all wrong too, broad and tan and freckled, and that reminds her of the erection, which is still there, and she looks down at herself, finding a broad, bare chest, obviously male, and a bed made of coarse fabric and something like animal fur.

When she scrambles back, she finds the unfamiliar body is at least wearing shorts, but that's all, and the ground-- _ground_ , soil packed hard, or maybe clay, but either way--is cold and hard and a little more forgiving than the metal floor of the Ark.

"What the fuck," she says, her own voice rumbling through her throat, deep and unfamiliar.

"Bell, are you finally up?" someone calls. "It was your day to make breakfast, dick."

In books, people always think things like this are dreams, but the thought barely even registers as a real possibility to Clarke. Everything is too real, too immediate. If this is a dream, it's the most real dream she's ever had. 

She pinches herself, once, just to get it out of the way, but when that doesn't work, she calls back, "Sorry, yeah! I'll be out in a minute!"

Even if it is somehow a dream, she can't wake herself up. All she can do is wait, investigate, and try to figure out what's going on and how to fix it.

From what Wells has said, morning erections are annoying but go away on their own, so Clarke ignores that whole issue and goes looking for clothing instead. She finds a wardrobe, an antique made of old, smooth wood, and in it clothing made of the same kind of materials as her bedding is. Some of it's thick and fairly complicated, but she finds the simplest shirt and trousers she can and pulls those on. There's no mirror, so she just inspects her outfit--probably fine--and runs her hands through her hair. It's thick and curly, a bit out of order, but she pats it down and hopes that's good enough.

The door goes straight outside into bright morning sunlight, and Clarke just stares for a minute, overwhelmed with the freshness of the air and the warmth of the sun and the trees stretching towards the sky. She's dreamed of the ground before but never like this, never so vividly, never with the smells and the tastes and--

"Took you long enough." 

She looks down to see a girl sitting by a fire. She offers a bowl of something and Clarke accepts it, sitting down next to her cross-legged, only a little awkward with the unusual genitalia. 

The girl is cute, maybe twelve or thirteen, with sharp eyes and long, brown hair in a complicated braid. She looks annoyed and expectant, and Clarke doesn't know what her line is, so she goes with, "Sorry I'm late. Overslept."

It's apparently the right thing to say. "I told you not to stay out so late."

"Sorry."

"You can stop apologizing, it's getting old. Just eat your breakfast and you're cooking tomorrow. I'll come wake you up, I don't care if you have someone in there."

"I didn't. Just tired."

"Whatever." She starts shoveling food into her mouth; Clarke follows suit, a little slower at first, but while the food isn't familiar, it _is_ delicious, probably the best thing she's ever eaten, fresh and flavorful, tastes bursting on her tongue. Before she knows it, she's wolfing it down like she has't eaten in weeks.

"This is so good," she says. "What is it?"

It's a stupid thing to say, of course, and the girl gives her an odd look. "You made it."

"Oh, right."

"Are you okay?"

Clarke pastes on a smile. "Feeling kind of off. Didn't sleep well. Do I need to do anything important today?"

"How am I supposed to know?" she grumbles, but Clarke must be selling the _off_ feeling, because she repents. "You told Tyr that you'd help with the garden, remember?"

"Right. Thanks."

She shakes her head. "Try drinking less." She drinks the remaining liquid in her bowl and sets it aside. "I cooked, you wash. See you tonight?"

"Have a good day," says Clarke, and the girl just waves over her shoulder as she goes.

Alone now, Clarke has the chance to really look around. She--or Bell, rather--seems to live in a small hut, one of several surrounding the fire pit where the girl was cooking. It seems to be the standard configuration for dwellings in the village. It seems to just be Bell and the girl in this group, which is odd too. She doesn't have a strong sense of how old Bell might be, but they seem young to be living alone. Could the girl be her daughter? Is _Bell_ maybe a word for father? Or are they just friends? Orphans, maybe?

Fuck, what a mess.

There doesn't seem to be any plumbing, which means she has no idea where she's supposed to wash the breakfast dishes. But she sees some other people with what look like things to wash and follows them, at a fairly safe distance. If they're not going to the well or whatever else they use to clean things here, she can always say she was going somewhere else. 

She's not sure where; she'll come up with something.

But the women leave the woods and make their way to a _river_ , the water shining in the morning sunlight, so beautiful it nearly takes her breath away. She never dreamed it could look like this, that it could be like this. 

She finds a spot on the shore, not too close to the women, and she's about to dip the bowl in when she suddenly catches sight of her own reflection in the water. 

It's not like looking in a mirror, not really enough to get the whole picture, but she can make out a few features. Whoever she is, her hair is black and in some sort of order, and her eyes are dark.

She thinks she looks nice.

"There you are, Bellamy." An older woman sits down next to him, dipping her feet in the water. "Octavia said you were slacking on your cooking duties."

 _Bellamy_. Bell for short. And the girl is Octavia. 

"I overslept," she explains. "Out too late last night."

"You need more balance," she says, stretching down to dip her fingers in the water. "I know I said you work too hard, but you can't fix that by working just as hard as ever and throwing yourself into--" She makes a face like she's smelling something rotten. "Whatever it is you young people get up to."

Clarke smiles. "I was thinking about taking the day off, but I'm supposed to help with--" The words falter. For all she knows, this woman _is_ Tyr, and Bellamy agreed to help with her garden.

Which must be the case, because the woman's expression softens. "It's not pressing to help with the garden, you know. If it wasn't for my back--"

"You know I'm happy to help."

"I know you are. And you know you don't owe me anything. You're family, it's my job to take care of you."

"It's my job to take care of you too," Clarke shoots back. She's got an idea of what Bellamy is like, one of those boys who treats his mother well but still likes fingering girls in dark corners at parties. She's hooked up with guys like that.

"Well, you can take care of me tomorrow. Today, you should take it easy."

On the Ark, she wouldn't manage it. She wouldn't be able to just take a day off from her responsibilities, and even if she'd been relieved, she would have found something productive to do.

On the ground, though, she doesn't know what her responsibilities are, and even if she did, she probably wouldn't know how to do them. The last thing she wants to do is screw up Bellamy's life. So she spends the day exploring, seeing all she can of the ground, trying to figure out if this is somehow, against all the odds, _real_. It doesn't make any sense, isn't even possible, but she can't convince herself it's just a dream. She can feel the chill of the running water, taste the food. There's bark under her fingers and clean air in her lungs.

It has to be real.

She eats dinner back in her own fire pit with Octavia. Her dinner is not up to Bellamy's usual standards, but apparently "I'm not feeling well today" is still an acceptable excuse for fucking up. Some of the other kids in town seem to expect her to come hang out with them, but she doesn't know if she can really pass for Bellamy , so she goes back to her own hut, jerks off mostly to see what it's like, and passes out.

The next morning, she wakes up in her own body and her own room, and through all the weirdness, only one thought emerges: they can live on the ground.

*

Over breakfast, she discovers Bellamy was in her body too, and she asks lightly probing questions to figure out if he did or said anything that she might need to know about, but he mostly seems to have made excuses as good as hers were. Her father covered for her some, and there's a part of her that wants to tell him, to see if he could help somehow, but it sounds so absurd. She wouldn't believe it herself, except that she can still feel the dirt under her fingers.

"Do you think anyone could have survived on Earth?" she asks Jake.

He frowns. "Through the apocalypse, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"If they did, they'd be in bad shape. Maybe not even--" He taps his jaw, thinking about the best way to explain. "It's possible, but if they're down there, they haven't gotten in touch. They're having no visible impact on the environment. Probably no technology. We'd have no way of knowing they existed."

That checks out with what Clarke experienced in the village. They didn't even seem aware of the tech Clarke takes for granted, the stuff they would have had on the ground before the nukes hit. There were repurposed parts around, antiques like Bellamy's closet, but no power at all.

"But they could be down there. The Earth could be survivable."

"In theory, for some people. Mutations exist," he explains. "You know that. The impact would have killed some people instantly, and the radiation would have gotten most of the survivors. But the ones who didn't die would have higher resistance, and they'd pass that on. Assuming the community was large and diverse enough, they could have had a few generations by now. But it's not that simple."

Clarke smiles. "That's simple?"

Jake waves her off; he's on a roll now. "The Earth hasn't exactly been stable all this time; it wasn't just one cataclysmic event. Even if there were survivor of the first blast, they might not have made it through the subsequent upheaval. That's part of why we don't want to go down."

"Like what?" 

He rubs his jaw. "Why all the sudden interest in Earth?"

The temptation to tell him flares again. She could ask what she did yesterday, what else she said about the ground, explain where the her mind had been. But it's just so unbelievable. Even if he said he didn't argue with her, she wouldn't be surprised to be taken in for a psych evaluation. "I had a weird dream," she says. "It made me wonder if maybe--I guess I always just assumed there was nothing down there. That there couldn't be."

"Anything is possible," says Jake, and that does make her smile. He doesn't know the half of it. 

"So, what else is wrong down there? What kinds of upheavals?"

"Nuclear reactors are still melting down. Our ancestors didn't know what to do with all the toxic waste they produced, and they were hoping we'd figure out how to deal with it. We monitor them, I remember a bad one in North America a few years back on the west coast that would have killed anyone living nearby."

"Except for people with particularly strong resistance."

"Depending on how close they were to the reactor."

"Do you think we'll ever make it down there?" she asks.

"Someday. Maybe not us."

"Maybe not," Clarke agrees, and the next morning, she's back on the ground.

*

The second day on Earth is easier. Clarke wakes up on time and figures out how to make breakfast for herself and Octavia. She finds the older woman, Tyr, and helps her with her garden. Clarke's not good at it, of course, but Tyr is unbothered, apparently just happy to have company, even when Clarke screws up. She manages to get some more information out of Tyr, too, putting together some of Bellamy's family tree. Octavia is his _sister_ , of course, such a simple answer that Clarke never would have guessed in a thousand years. People have sisters here--Tyr, too, is Bellamy's grandfather's sister, who hasn't been taking care of Bellamy and Octavia after their mother died so much as just being around, present if they need her.

Once the gardening is done, Clarke jumps in the lake to clean off, and it's like nothing she's ever felt before, the full-body submersion, like she imagines zero-g, but with the press of water all around her, cool and refreshing and primal. Maybe she'll come back enough that she could feel _rain_. That would be something.

After dinner, she looks around Bellamy's room until she finds some thick parchment and a piece of charcoal. It's still possible on that second day that this will never happen again, but even if it doesn't, it can't hurt to send Bellamy a message. Just in case.

_Bellamy,_

_I assume by now you know I'm Clarke Griffin. When I get back home, I'm going to write a list of things you should know about my life, in case this happens again. I hope you'll do the same for me. It can't hurt to be prepared._

_Thanks in advance,  
Clarke_

When she sits down to write the information out for Bellamy the next day, though, she finds herself struggling to sum up what he needs to know. In the end, she tries to think of every question she has about his life and answer it for her own. She explains what she knows of the apocalypse, how each of the stations was populated, how they joined together to form the Ark. She tells him about the formation and structure of the council, distribution of resources, how much she'd like him to avoid being arrested for anything. She outlines her daily schedule, makes lists of people she knows and how she relates to them, and lets him know he can ask any other questions he wants.

It feels a little silly, writing a note to a boy who may or may not be switching bodies with her, but it just makes sense. She's sure he's as confused as she is, and if it's happened twice, there's no reason to think it won't happen again. Maybe this will just be her life now, being half Clarke, half Bellamy.

Once she's done all that work, she does expect that nothing will happen, that putting everything down on paper will somehow have fixed it, but when she opens her eyes she sees the now-familiar roof of Bellamy's hut and sighs.

This is her life.

*

Bellamy is eighteen years old, and his mother died six months ago after a long illness. His sister is twelve and a handful, especially since their mother passed. His village is one of several in a loose alliance, which is in turn part of a larger coalition, but they're far away from other people and don't tend to socialize much. His father died when he was very young, and his sister's father died when she was very young, so he had to grow up fast, even with the support of the rest of the community. He likes history and has been taking advantage of the resources on the Ark to learn more about how it came to be, so a lot of her information will be redundant, but he probably won't mind. She'll have a different perspective.

Since his days are less structured than hers, he's given her a list of things things she can do without raising suspicions or injuring herself, as well as as breakdown of people he knows and what they might want to talk about. He's noted things he has to get done, would like to get done, and would like to avoid, and it makes Clarke smile, thinking of him putting all this together. She's never had a penpal, but she's heard the term before, and it feels a little like that. Albeit much, much stranger.

 _If you have time, you should also write a run-down of the highlights of your day_ , he adds, at the end of his letter. _Anything I should know that you did, so it doesn't look like I forgot about it. I'll do the same for you. If this is going to keep happening, we should have each other's backs._

And that's what they do. It's an odd kind of relationship, by necessity, but being Bellamy somehow slots into Clarke's routine. She gets used to never waking up where she went to sleep, to cooking the recipes Bellamy leaves for her in the morning, going out to look for herbs he needs or helping with construction or whatever else. More than that, she's getting used to the feel of sunlight on her skin, the taste of fresh air in her lungs, to having the whole world at her fingertips.

She wants that to be her life so much she can taste it.

 _Do you know where you are on Earth?_ she writes him one night, and the next time she's in his body, he's responded, _North America, west coast. Near the former US/Canada border. Why?_

That afternoon, she consults the latest images they have of that part of the Earth, trying to figure out if their satellites have picked up any trace of civilization. They're not close to the ocean, so it would be inland a little, in the forest, maybe, but--

The whole area is brown and faded, dead in a way that makes Clarke's stomach turn. She's seen places like that on the map before, places that were hit by bombs, places that were destroyed beyond recognition, and that can't be right. She's been there, in that village, in that vibrant forest. She's drunk the clear water and breathed the clean air.

It can't be like that.

 _Did you ever look for the village on the Ark's satellites?_ she asks Bellamy that night.

 _I have now_ , he writes back. _I asked your dad what happened to it, and he says a reactor melted down a few years back. The one "we" talked about, so I assume that means you. If you've got any ideas about what it means, I'm open to suggestions._

It's a lot to take in, early in the morning. Because there are really only a couple options, if she does believe that she and Bellamy are switching places, that all of this is real and true. Either Bellamy is wrong about where he lives, or he's right but he somehow doesn't live there anymore, or doesn't live there _now_. And that one honestly seems more likely, which is fucked up, but she's already switching bodies with someone. How much weirder is it if she's also traveling through time?

 _How many generations has it been for you since the bombs?_ she asks Bellamy, and he does a little drawing, tracing his mother's family back to the first one born after the bombs, his great-grandmother, five years after. It tracks roughly with Clarke's own timeline, but not so close he couldn't be a few years earlier.

 _What if you're about to be destroyed?_ she asks him.

 _How would we know?_ he writes back.

Clarke thinks about asking Jake, but it feels dangerous. He's an adult, and she still can't help thinking he won't believe her. She loves him, and she trusts him, but not with this.

"What are the stages of nuclear meltdown?" she asks Raven.

Raven's eyebrows go up. "How so?"

"If someone was living close to a nuclear reactor that was going to meltdown, how would they know? What are the warning signs?"

"I swear, you're just getting weirder." 

Clarke and Raven aren't exactly close, not like she and Wells are, but Clarke kind of wants them to be. She'd had a crush for a while, but it passed, like crushes do when you don't do anything about them. But Raven is the smartest person she knows, with the broadest knowledge base. The best resource.

"I know. It's been a weird few weeks. Would there be illness? What?"

"Illness, plants and animals dying off, acid rain, probably. Seriously, why?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Yeah? Try me."

She shouldn't, she really shouldn't. But she wants to. She's so tired of hiding a fucking miracle.

"I think I'm traveling through time and living half my life as a grounder boy who's about to die, and I want to save him."

Raven blinks a few times, fast, like she's rebooting. "What?"

"I told you you wouldn't believe me."

"Yeah, that's pretty unbelievable." She wets her lips, studies Clarke. "I need more information."

"Every other day, I'm someone else. Just in the last month or so. I don't know how it happened, but--I feel like I've been to the ground, Raven. Like I know what it's like. And he and I--we talk. We leave each other notes. I asked him where he lives, and it was destroyed when a reactor melted down a few years ago. So if it's real and I'm doing it--I have to know how to save him. Where he can go that's safe."

Raven just looks at her for a long moment. "Can I see the notes?" she finally asks.

It feels a little like betrayal, leading Raven back to her room and pulling the notepad out of its hiding place. But she's _helping_ , isn't she? It's not as if Bellamy ever asked her to keep the notes safe. That was always her decision. If he wanted to tell his sister about her, that would be his call.

Raven scans through the journal, pages and pages of--conversation, really. Clarke and Bellamy discussing their days, their lives, their relationships. She's talked more to him than she has anyone else, this last much. She knows so much about him, without ever having seen his face completely.

"Either this is real or you're legitimately nuts," says Raven.

"Those are the two options, yeah."

"Okay, so--assuming you're not, I'm going to see this Bellamy guy tomorrow?"

"Talk to him, anyway. He'll still look like me."

She nods. "So, which reactor is it? Let's see if we can figure out how long he's got."

It's the oddest kind of collaboration, the three of them working together across time and space to try to save Bellamy's life, which might not even need saving. Maybe she's totally wrong about this, maybe he's in a parallel universe too, maybe he's farther in the past that she thinks, maybe the whole thing is just a big waste of time.

But if this is some kind of magic--and Clarke doesn't know what else it could be besides magic--then there must be a reason. And maybe the reason is that Bellamy and his village need saving, and Clarke can help them. Maybe that's why all this is happening.

"What's he like?" she asks Raven, late one night as they're mapping a route from the village to a fallout shelter that might be in good enough shape to keep everyone safe through the meltdown.

"Who, Bellamy?"

"Yeah."

"You talk to him more than I do."

"But I've never actually talked to him."

"Neither have I, I've just talked to you with someone else's brain." She shrugs. "What do you want me to tell you? He's smart and interesting and I don't want him to die either."

"Do you think it's safe for us to go to the ground?"

"Not yet. Not there, anyway. I'd give it another few years before the radiation has cleared out enough for the land to be safe again. Probably not arable, but they can get out of wherever they're hiding and move south in--" She clucks her tongue. "Three years. For us. I'd say five years total underground for Bellamy and his crew. Assuming they find somewhere they can stay."

"What if I never know?" Clarke asks, fingers tracing the trail on the map. It'll be a two-day trip, Clarke going out and Bellamy returning, so both of them can take a look at the shelter and decide whether or not it's going to work. "What if we stop switching and I just--never find out what happened to him?"

"We'll get you down there," Raven says. "Even if it's just you, I'll get you down there. If you still want to chase your brain pal down in three years."

"It would be pretty sad if we went to all this trouble and never even knew if it worked."

"You don't think you'll just spend every other day as him for the rest of your life?"

"I hope not," she says, a kneejerk response that doesn't even quite make sense. "I want to meet him," she admits, when Raven raises her eyebrows.

Raven nods. "Yeah. Let's make that happen."

*

They end up spending four days in the fallout shelter, filling Raven in on all the details, Clarke doing sketches, Bellamy testing the hydroponics, Raven nearly murdering both of them as she tries to describe how to fix things she can't get her hands on. 

But by the end of the four days, they've turned the place into a viable living option. It's not pretty, and it won't be a fun five years, but the Ark isn't fun either. They'll survive, Clarke is pretty sure, and that's the most important thing.

 _Black rain this afternoon_ , Bellamy writes, two days after he gets back to the village. _I'm going to ask Raven what that means, how long we have. I guess we should maybe just get in there, before it gets worse._

_You're going to have to be in there for five years, I wouldn't be in a hurry._

_You just don't want to be stuck in a bunker_ , he teases. _I don't blame you, you're already stuck in a space bunker. It must have been nice for you to get out. But I'm not taking any chances._

 _Good, don't._ She worries her lip, staring at the blank expanse of paper in front of her. She's never been as good at words as she is at drawing, doesn't know how to put together what she wants to say. _I'm afraid that when you go in the bunker, this is going to stop and we're not going to switch anymore. So if this is the end, I'm glad I met you. Or whatever I did._

And then, she does what she does best: she draws. She draws Raven for him, Wells, her parents, her room. She draws the Earth from the window of the Ark, Octavia and Tyr, Bellamy's hut and the woods and, finally, herself, the best self-portrait she can manage. It's far from her best work, quick and sketchy, and her hand aches by the time she's done, but at least it's _something_.

The sun is almost coming up. What happens if she doesn't go to sleep? Would she be trapped in Bellamy's body? In his life?

It's not worth the risk. She doesn't want to _be_ Bellamy, she wants to be with him.

So she goes to sleep and wakes up in her own bed, as exhausted as she'd expect after pulling an all-nighter. It's tempting to just roll over and catch a few more hours, but she drags herself up to find Bellamy's letter, just to see if there's anything pressing she should know and any reason she _has_ to get out of bed today. Maybe she can just mope around feeling sorry for herself. She's been a different person part-time for _months_ now. She's earned a break.

He has the usual updates, logistics, a breakdown of what Raven told him about the shelter and what his plans are. And then, at the end, squeezed in like he was trying to make every inch of paper count, there it is: _Maybe this is just me, but I think this might be the last time we do this. I've got a feeling I'm not going to see you again. Or be you again, I guess. So if this is it, I just want to say thanks. Not just for the shelter stuff. I think I needed a break from my life, and I got one. Whatever else happens, I'm so grateful this happened, that I got to meet you._

_I guess if this isn't the last time, this is going to be weird, so if we're back day after tomorrow, just don't mention this, okay? Thanks._

Clarke clutches the letter to her chest, curling around it as she closes her eyes.

That night, she goes to sleep in her bed and, for the first time in three months, she wakes up there too.

It's a good thing. It has to be.

*

It's probably a good thing they have to wait three years for the radiation to clear up, because it takes that long for her to convince anyone that they can go down. Even saying _she_ did it a bit of a stretch, because Raven did most of the work. Clarke could have used Bellamy as an argument, but the two of them decided that trying to use her notebook full of messages from Bellamy as evidence would be questionable, at best. It worked with Raven, but she can't go in front of Chancellor Jaha and Marcus Kane and Diana Syndey and _her mother_ with a story about how she spent every other day of her life in someone else's body. 

So instead, they go for facts. Raven looks at data like plant growth, oxygen levels, radiation levels on the Ark. None of it is _evidence_ , not enough to be sure, but it's enough for the council to finally approve a dropship, a test mission.

"I don't want you on it," Abby tells Clarke, as she packs.

"It was my idea. If I don't go down, why would anyone else?"

"Clarke--"

"What?"

"How are you so sure?"

She thinks of Bellamy's final letter under her pillow, the same place it's been for all these years. It's stupid, maybe, ridiculous, to hold on for this long, but he's like a loose tooth she can't pull out, her unfinished business.

She has to know. She has to see if it was real. 

"I don't know," she says, and it's mostly true. "I just am. I have to be."

"I hope you're right."

Clarke hugs her tight. It's not goodbye, but it might be one of the last times. Even if everything goes right and she can survive, the rest of the Ark may not come down. They may decide that it's not worth the trouble or the risk.

"I do too."

She and Raven take a hundred volunteers, mostly people around her age, a few dumbass kids in the Skybox who like their odds on the ground better than they like their odds of living past their eighteenth birthdays. It's not exactly a dream team, but it's good enough. Their plan is to land by the shelter, open it up for whatever resources they can find in there. If everything that happened was real and Clarke's experience with Bellamy wasn't some fucked up dream, then they'll find people in there, alive or dead, around two hundred, if everything went right. They'll move south, to the green they can see on the coast of California, and tell the Ark that it's safe, that they can make it here. There are no reactors nearby, and the land should be fertile.

"What if they didn't make it?" Clarke asks.

"Then they didn't make it," says Raven. "We'll still be on the ground, right? It's got to be better than being stuck up here."

"I thought you liked space."

"I like spacewalks," she says. "As long as they've got cool stuff on Earth too, I'll be fine.

"What if he doesn't remember me?"

"Then you remind him how awesome you are."

Clarke grins. "I'm glad you're coming with me."

Raven slings her arm around Clarke's shoulders, gives her a quick squeeze. "I wouldn't miss it."

When she opens up the doors, it's like stepping back in time, the smell of the air so familiar, the way the sun feels on her face. She's been here before, she knows. It's not the same place she was when she was Bellamy, but it's the same planet. _Home_.

"This is it," she tells Raven, and Raven smiles.

"Yeah, we made it."

They don't take everyone to check on the shelter. She leaves Wells and Miller in charge, and she and Raven take a small group through the forest--the _familiar_ forest--to the same bunker she remembers examining for two days.

And then, she has to open the door.

"Remember, there might not be anyone in there, but that doesn't mean they're not real," Raven says. "Maybe they already came out."

"Maybe. I told him to wait, to be careful. No second chances."

"If it's safe for us, it's safe for him."

"I know."

She knocks, which feels ridiculous at best and actively harmful at worst, like anyone in there will be absolutely terrified that something is outside trying to get in, so she doesn't wait for a response before starting to turn the wheel on the airlock door. Intellectually, she knows it's not any heavier than it was, just harder to turn because she's not as strong as Bellamy, but it feels like it takes so much longer. But she manages, and then it's opening up, a musty smell hitting her face, dark and dust and--

"Clarke," Bellamy breathes, and she sees him in full for the first time.

She's tried to draw him off and on, this boy whose face she only saw in choppy water or warped surfaces, whose features she couldn't get all at once. She knows him through a haze, but she recognizes him instantly, dark eyes and messy hair, scruffy chin.

"Bellamy," she says.

He pulls her in just as she wraps her arms around his neck. He's solid and warm, his scent familiar, every inch of him something she knows intimately.

"You sound different," he says. She can hear his smile.

"You're not as tall as I thought you were."

"How did you get here?"

"I told my mom we could come down. Once the radiation cleared up enough."

"And you came here?"

"I wanted to meet you."

His lips press against her hair, soft, and then he's pulling back, looking her up and down, grinning. "So, it's safe to come out?"

She slides her hand into his, squeezes once. There's some part of her brain aware of her people and his, watching in complete confusion, but she can't bring herself to care. It was all real and now here he is, her prize for believing in magic. This impossible boy.

"There's a whole world out here, yeah."

"I had no idea," he teases. "Let's see what we can do with it."


End file.
